The Something That Clicked

It did not begin as a plan.

That is probably important. Plans have columns and budgets and people who know what they are doing. What I had, in October 2013, was a restless feeling that no more mr fat guy had outgrown the shape I had given it.

The marathon had changed everything, but it had also left a strange problem behind. Before Perth Marathon I had one enormous thing in front of me. Lose weight. Stop drifting. Run a marathon. Prove to myself that the bloke who had been 142.6 kg, smoking, drinking too much, and quietly assuming a heart attack would arrive at some point, was not the only version of me available.

Then I did it.

I crossed that finish line in June and, after the wobble and the sadness and the “what now?” fog, the old mission came back with more force. I did not just want to keep running. I wanted the story to be useful. I wanted to write, speak, coach, encourage, annoy, challenge, prod, and generally wave my arms around until people who had given up on themselves had at least one moment of thinking, “hang on, maybe I can do something too.”

What I did not have was the shape.

The Missing Event

Somewhere in that season I was told something that lodged in me. If this was going to become bigger than a blog and a bunch of race reports, it needed an event. Something tangible. Something people could point at and understand.

That made sense and did not help at all.

I had no shortage of energy. I had ideas for a book, for speaking, for workshops, for taking the running changes lives message further than my own little corner of the internet. But the spark was missing. I could feel that I was waiting for something, which is a very dramatic way of saying I was mostly overthinking and drinking coffee.

Then the Rogues did what the Rogues so often did: they made something serious appear inside something silly.

Shinno posted a long-run route. Not a sensible long run, obviously. A mock route from Perth to Brisbane, the kind of ridiculous MapMyRun joke that appears in a running community and gets a laugh because everyone knows it is absurd.

Except something in me did not laugh and move on.

Something clicked.

I had joined Rogue Runners because the whole idea of running for people who would run if they could had got under my skin. The Blaise connection, the generosity, the larrikin madness of it all, the way serious kindness could sit inside nonsense and nicknames and green shirts. It already felt like running had stopped being just about me.

So when that route appeared, it caught all the loose threads at once.

Perth to Brisbane.

Running changes lives.

An event big enough to make people ask why.

A way to take no more mr fat guy beyond a blog and into towns, schools, media, running clubs, breakfast conversations, service stations, and all the little human places between the west coast and Queensland.

The Truck

Then a friend from my non-running life tagged me in a photo.

It was a haulage truck with WILMOT written down the side and the words “Brisbane - Perth Specialists” beside it.

That should not have meant anything. It was just my surname on a truck. Just a freight company. Just a coincidence.

But I have learned that some coincidences arrive with their boots on.

I could not get the idea out of my head after that. It felt less like I had invented it and more like I had finally noticed it standing there, tapping its watch, waiting for me to catch up.

I remember the early awkwardness of saying it out loud. I did not have a route. I did not have a crew. I did not have a sponsor. I did not have a support vehicle. I did not know whether it would take 70 days, 90 days, four months, or a lifetime of explaining to people that yes, I was apparently serious.

At first I called it a run. That was the language I had then. Running had saved me, or at least had given me a practical way to save myself, so of course my brain reached for that word. The practical reality would change. The crossing would become a run and walk, then mostly a walk, then something much bigger than either word.

But on 11 October 2013 the idea was simple and completely unreasonable.

I wanted to go from Perth to Brisbane on foot.

Out Loud

The moment an idea like that goes public, it changes.

Inside your own head, it can still be a fantasy. A bit of mental theatre. A nice dramatic image to carry around while making another coffee. Once you type it into the world, even half-jokingly, other people start reacting. They ask questions. They offer ideas. They laugh, but not always in the way that lets you off the hook. Some of them believe you before you fully believe yourself, which is both lovely and deeply inconvenient.

Within days I was talking about routes. Perth to Kalgoorlie. Across to Adelaide. Melbourne. Sydney. Gold Coast. Brisbane. Ipswich for Blaise. I was looking at maps in chunks, staring at vast empty spaces, and realising that day one would barely get me out of the Perth metro area.

The numbers were ridiculous. Five thousand kilometres plus. Dozens and dozens of long days. Training weeks that would make marathon training look like a gentle warm-up. A support crew. Vehicles. Nutrition. Hydration. Media. Fundraising. Sponsors. Schools and community groups. Rest days. Blisters. Batteries. Accommodation. All the invisible scaffolding that sits underneath a public adventure and tries not to collapse.

I had no right to be calm about any of it.

But I had something better than calm. I had proof that impossible could change shape.

Two years earlier, running a marathon had been a joke. A painful, absurd, “one day maybe” thing that belonged to a different species of human. Then it became a plan. Then a training block. Then a start line. Then six hours and forty-seven minutes of arguing with my body beside the Swan River. Then a finish.

So when my brain tried to say, “people like you do not run across Australia”, another part of me had an answer ready.

People like me were not supposed to run marathons either.

This was the first tiny public heartbeat of what would become Hearts Across Australia. Not the name yet. Not the polished story. Not the final route. Just a click, a truck, a joke from a Rogue, a conversation over coffee, and the unsettling feeling that my life had just pointed itself at the other side of the country.